WILLIAM WILSON has a problem: he has glimmers of the past, but he does not
understand them. Death is approaching, and in a final attempt to make sense of his life Wilson desires sympathy from his fellow men:
“I would wish them to seek out for me, in the details I am about to give, some little oasis of fatality amid a wilderness
of error.”(1) Unfortunately for Wilson, his life can be summed up with an easy solution. He
lived as an allegory, partially good, partially bad, and he killed his good half. The moral dichotomy in Wilson’s life easily
lends itself toward a simplified solution, and his story has been classified in terms ranging from melodramatic allegory to profound
psychological study. In my examination of his life, I want, as William Carlos Williams suggests, “to make a start out of
particulars,” examining the “particulars” in William Wilson’s story, that is, specifically, Poe’s
revisions. More than doppelgdägers — although this motif appears several times in Poe’s tales —
psychological analyses, or metaphysical symbols, I am interested in Poe’s evolving texts, and I wish to compare the final
version (BJ, August 30, 1845) with the original (Burton’s, October 1839), for a clearer interpretation of
Wilson’s problems.(2)

After all, this approach is like Wilson’s suggestion on procedureto examine the details — and
Poe’s basic theory on the short story. Reviewing Hawthorne’s Twice-Told Tales, Poe writes that “in the whole
composition, there should be no word written of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one of the established
design,” adding: “Truth is often, and in very great degree, the aim of the tale.”(3) Donald B. Stauffer points out that analysis, the language by which truth is derived, is “the keynote of Wilson’s
remarks.”(4) He notes Wilson’s latinate and abstract terms and words like
“perhaps,” “conceive,” and “solve,” which suggest speculative language. He also notices how frequent
parenthetical phrases qualify thoughts and how parallel sentence structures weigh ideas. This mode of [page 74:] speech contrasts markedly with the emotional hyperbole of the opening paragraphs, leaving
the reader with a narrator who lacks comprehension but who, nonetheless, provides lucid explanations.

Glossing over his childhood, Wilson begins his story with a reminiscence of his early school life because, in the
“minute recollections of the school and its concerns,” he finds an emotional respite “in the weakness of a few
rambling details.” The revisions concerning Wilson’s description of the school reflect this passion for details, for Poe
deletes excessive adjectives from Wilson’s picture to emphasize the character’s visual acuity. The “tall houses”
are no longer “inordinately tall,” the “high wall” around the house is not “enormously high,” and
the “large chambers” in the school building are not “enormously large.” This movement from exaggeration to
precision implies that Wilson can recognize the physical limits of his world.(5) Referring to the
schoolhouse, Poe drops the terms “somewhat decayed” and “old,” suggesting that Wilson lives in a more ordinary
and comprehensible reality than may have been apparent in the original version.

Richard Wilbur writes that Poe’s houses reflect a character’s state of mind, and, if this statement is
true, then we may assume that Wilson has a fairly sharp mind. However, Wilbur writes that dim, winding passages in Poe’s stories
represent a state of reverie wherein a character loses his sense of location, and he cites, as an example, Wilson’s description of
the school’s interior:(6)

But the house: — how quaint an old building was this: — to me how veritably a palace of enchantment: There
was really no end to its windings — to its incomprehensible subdivisions. It was difficult, at any given time, to say with
certainty upon which of its two stories one happened to be. From each room to every other there were sure to be found three or four
steps either in ascent or descent. Then the lateral branches were innumerable — inconceivable — and so
returning in upon themselves, that our most exact ideas in regard to the whole mansion were not very far different from those with
which we pondered upon infinity.

Now let me add the concluding sentence of the paragraph: “During the five years of my residence here, I was never able to
ascertain with precision, in what remote locality lay the little sleeping apartment assigned to myself and some eighteen or twenty
scholars.” From Wilson’s description the house certainly seems like a mysterious [page 75:] mansion, and Poe enhances this image by deleting the idea that the dormitory was
“cottage-built,” making the dorm and the classrooms one large building. Yet if the house does baffle Wilson, then his
apparent ignorance of locations appears inconsistent with Poe’s attempts, through revisions, to show that Wilson has a good sense
of material qualities. Poe, though, makes one minor but important change in the above passage which eliminates this idea; he changes the
word “impossible” to “difficult,” implying that Wilson could have known his location in the house.

This knowledge is demonstrated in the story when, deciding to play a practical joke on his rival, Wilson steals through
a “wilderness of passages” straight to the latter’s bedroom. Wilson has said that he never knew where he and the
others slept, yet he is discovered, at night, marching through a labyrinth like a Theseus following a string of understanding that
reinforces the impression of the revisions. Thus, in Wilson’s character, the reader perceives an ironic contrast between
Wilson’s familiarity with his physical surroundings and his unawareness of his knowledge.

In keeping with this contrast, Wilson’s description of his rival, the other William Wilson, is precise, but, in
terms of human insight, he cannot explain the motivations of his other half. In the original version, Wilson notices that they were
“not altogether unlike”; this phrase becomes “even singularly alike,” which emphasizes their physical
similarity. The other William Wilson also recognizes this similarity and discovers a means to annoy Wilson by imitating his dress, walk,
and general manner. A more striking parallel is that both William Wilsons have a common birth date, and Poe rearranges the statement of
this fact to create an impact on the reader.

These observations indicate Wilson’s awareness of a close physical correspondence, although the revisions reveal
an initial emotional ambivalence toward his double. Wilson says that the other William Wilson “appeared to be destitute alike of
the ambition which urged and the passionate energy of mind which enabled me to excel.” Wilson, though, cannot define his feelings
toward his rival, saying only that “they formed a motley and heterogeneous admixture,” adding: “to the moralist, it
will be necessary to say, in addition, that Wilson and myself were the most inseparable companions.” In the original, Wilson says
that his double “appeared utterly destitute” of [page 76:] ambition,
and that his feelings “were formed of a motley and heterogeneous mixture.” Deleting “utterly” eliminates the
possibility that Wilson has formed a definite idea about the ambitions of his rival and the change of tense and the substitution of
“admixture” for “mixture” reinforce the impression of Wilson’s confusion. Poe also originally qualifies
the term “moralist” with the phrase “fully acquainted with the minute springs of human action,” but he removes
it because, although Wilson can describe a relationship as well as he can describe an object, he can define motivation only tenuously.
Yet Wilson’s emotions alter after “frequent officious interferences with my will.” He does concede that his
double’s “moral sense was far keener than my own; and that I might today, have been a better and thus a happier man, had I
less frequently rejected his counsels embodied in those meaning whispers I then but too cordially hated and too bitterly
despised.” The original reads: “had I more seldom rejected the counsels” which I “too bitterly derided,”
and, in the change, Wilson’s feelings sidestep understanding to become a “positive hatred.”

This animosity is the impetus for the previously mentioned practicaljoke. Approaching the bed, Wilson holds a lamp to
his sleeping counterpart’s face and is shocked:

Were these — these the lineaments of William Wilson? . . . Not thus he appeared — assuredly not
thus — in the vivacity of his waking hours. The same name: the same contour of person: the same day of arrival at the
academy: And then his dogged and meaningless imitation of my gait, my voice, my habits, and my manner: Was it, in truth, within the
bounds of human possibility, that what I now saw was the result, merely, of the habitual practice of this sarcastic imitation?
Awe-stricken, and with a creeping shudder, I extinguished the lamp, passed silently from the chamber, and left, at once, the halls of
that old academy, never to enter them again.

He is shocked not by the recognition of their moral relationship but by their extraordinary likeness. Poe substitutes
“saw” for “witnessed” to stress Wilson’s visual perception and adds the word “merely” to
provide a greater contrast between Wilson’s day and night awareness. He also deletes “a gloomy and tempestuous night of an
early autumn”; this change is similar to revision of other [page 77:] stories
in which he muted Gothic or sensational images which may have obscured a desired effect.(7)

Here, the effect is terrifying enough for William Wilson, who flees the academy in a state of mind which contrasts
markedly with the way in which he previously described the school. Wilson remembered it as “a dream-like and spirit-soothing
place,” yet his experiences there were anything but spirit-soothing. Another odd contrast is that, although the school is supposed
to be peaceful, the desks are “so beseamed with initial letters, names at full length, grotesque figures, and other multiplied
efforts of the knife, as to have entirely lost what little form might have been their portion in days long departed.”
Significantly, Poe drops “meaningless gashes” from this list because in William Wilson’s world and in the story
nothing is meaningless, including the other William Wilson’s supposedly “meaningless” imitations.

The irony between Wilson’s memory of the academy and what he actually experienced is consistent with the irony of
his ability to recognize physical but not moral relationships. On irony, James Gargano writes that Poe “often designs his tales as
to show his narrators’ limited comprehension of their own problems and states of mind.”(8) He also observes that “William Wilson” has “a tight and coherent form which expresses Poe’s view of
the relation between man’s inner, psychological disorganization and his futility in the world at large.”(9) He bases his opinion on the relationship between Wilson’s wild and futile attempts to flee his rival and
the tight and forcefully directed chronological narrative. Gargano’s point derives from certain conceptual observations about the
short story, although I contend that, by examining the specific details with which Poe himself was concerned, we can recognize
particular ironic relationships within the story.

The major ironic correlation is in Wilson’s inability to associate his physical resemblance with his moral
relationship to the other William Wilson, despite his eye for detail. At one point, Wilson does have a visionary glimmer of a close tie:
“I cannot better describe the sensation which oppressed me than by saying that I could with difficulty shake off the belief of my
having been acquainted with the being who stood before me, at some epoch very long ago — some point of the past even infinitely
remote.” This vision indicates [page 78:] a prenatal world where their
spirits may have been one, and Poe rearranges this sentence to stress the possibility that the two Wilsons may have been previously
acquainted. Ironically, the physical world — the world of clothes, speech, and detail — divides the whole
person of William Wilson into good and bad halves, with the sharp-eyed bad half being blind to his bond with the good half. It is not
within the nature of William Wilson to dwell on metaphysics, and so he dismisses his vision saying: “I mention it at all but to
define the day of the last conversation I there held with my singular namesake.”

After this conversation, Wilson makes his night visit and then flees the academy. The pace of the story quickens
because, after having established the relationship in the long school section, Poe is free to trace the rapid, progressive moral decline
of William Wilson, a decline that is constantly checked by his other half. At Eton, Wilson is prevented from making “a toast of
more than wonted profanity” when he is summoned to meet “a youth about my own height, and habited in a white kerseymere
morning frock coat, cut in the novel fashion of the one I myself wore at the moment.” In the original story, Wilson was about to
utter “an intolerable profanity”; Poe changes the adjective to tone down a sensational image that might overshadow a desired
effect. Then, after Wilson has unknowingly ruined a young lord by cheating at cards in Oxford, a stranger enters the room and announces
that a pack of shaved cards is in Wilson’s morning coat. He leaves the room, and an uproar ensues when the cards are found in
Wilson’s pocket. As Wilson departs the room in disgrace, he is handed a cloak, the duplicate of his own. He realizes that, besides
himself, only the stranger has worn a cloak, but, “retaining some presence of mind,” he accepts the second cloak, and places
it over his own. Without comment a connection is made based on the cloak, and this time Wilson flees a school not from fear but from
shame.

In Paris, Vienna, Berlin, and Moscow, his criminal intentions are always thwarted by his rival. Then, in Rome, they
meet at a masquerade, a rather ironic setting for a dropping of disguises and also a common motif in Poe’s tales, most notably
“The Masque of the Red Death.” Prior to arranging an assignation with the beautiful, young wife of an aging duke, Wilson
suddenly feels a hand on his shoulder and hears that “ever-remembered, low damnable whisper.” [page 79:] “In an absolute phrenzy of wrath, I turned at once upon him who had thus interrupted
me, and seized him violently by the collar. He was attired, as I had expected, in a costume altogether similar to my own; wearing a
Spanish cloak of blue velvet, begirt about the waist with a crimson belt sustaining a rapier. A mask of black silk entirely covered his
face.” Wilson and the interloper fight in a small antechamber, and, with “sheer strength,” Wilson presses his foe
against a wall and kills him. Then he hurries to the door, secures it, and is shocked as he turns around:

A large mirror, — so at first it seemed to me in my confusion — now stood where none had been perceptible before;
and, as I stepped up to it in extremity of terror, mine own image, but with features all pale and dabbled in blood, advanced to meet
me with a feeble tottering gait.

Thus it appeared, I say, but was not. It was my antagonist — it was Wilson, who then stood before me in the agonies of
his dissolution. His mask and cloak lay, where he had thrown them, upon the floor. Not a thread in all his raiment — not
a line in all the marked and singular lineaments of his face which was not, even in the most absolute identity, mine own!

It was Wilson; but he spoke no longer in a whisper, and I could have fancied that I myself was speaking while he said: “You
have conquered, and I yield. Yet, henceforward art thou also dead — dead to the World, to Heaven and to Hope! In me didst thou
exist — and, in my death, see by this image, which is thine own, how utterly thou hast murdered thyself.”

In the first paragraph, Wilson’s hatred is stressed, as “an absolute phrenzy of wrath” replaces “a perfect
whirlwind,” the latter term a sensational image that does little to characterize Wilson’s reaction. The other William
Wilson’s last words are meant to convert that blindness into enlightenment as Wilson is commanded to “see by this
image” what they were together and what he has done to separate permanently the halves. “See” echoes Poe’s
earlier change of “witnessed” for “saw,” reinforcing the idea that Wilson has not adequately employed his
perceptions. The reader’s perceptions also receive a strong hint to “see” as Poe illuminates several other earlier
mentioned elements in the ending.

The most significant revisions are the additions to the final paragraphs, particularly in the references to clothes
— an important detail in the story. To Wilson’s observations about the Spanish cloak, Poe [page 80:] adds that it was “blue velvet, begirt about the waist with a crimson belt sustaining
a rapier.” The line about the mask was originally a clause; in the revision it becomes a separate sentence underscoring the
disguising of Wilson’s antagonist’s features. These modifications create a vivid impression of their mutual disguises and
arm both characters. Adding “not a thread in all his raiment” impresses upon Wilson their mutual identity more strongly than
any other mention of clothes.

Through Wilson’s recognition of their indistinguishable costume and appearance, he finally sees that he and the
other William Wilson are the same person. This startling realization occurred on his night visit, but it was a discovery that he blotted
out of his mind. In this final scene, his double will not let him forget this fact again. The recognition comes through the emphasis on
clothes, and, in fact, the relationship between clothes and moral correspondences is a thread woven through the story, for whenever he
met another character, Wilson tended to evaluate the person in terms of his garments.

Bransby, the master of the academy, is “a gigantic paradox, too monstrous for solution” to Wilson, who
cannot reconcile the benign minister with “his robes so glossy and so clerically flowing” with the strict disciplinarian
“who, of late, with sour visage, and in snuffy habiliments, administered, ferule in hand, the Draconian laws of the
academy.” Then at Eton, Wilson notices that his startling visitor is wearing the same clothes as himself, and, at Oxford, a long
section explains how the departing stranger left behind an expensive fur, the exact duplicate of Wilson’s coat. It is a tremendous
coincidence that Wilson’s moral intruders dress as he does, yet, while noting this fact, he shows no awareness whatsoever of its
possible significance. It is interesting that, as Wilson recognizes the duplicate garb in the Eton scene, Poe removes Wilson’s
remark “what then struck my mad fancy” to create an emotional reaction consistent with the other incidents.

Not until the final scene of the story, when Wilson is commanded to “see by this image,” does he make the
necessary associations. Because he tells the story in retrospect, his moral sense seems more pronounced at the end of his life than at
any time prior to the symbolic murder;(10) although Wilson evidently anguishes over his fate, I
question whether he really understands his situation. In the second [page 81:]
paragraph of the story, clothes are made a metaphor for morals when Wilson says “from me, in an instant, all virtue dropped bodily
as a mantle,” yet morals do not imply guilt for, in later versions, out goes the next remark: “I shrouded my nakedness in
triple guilt.” Although this line may have been changed so as not to overuse the metaphor, it is more important to note that Poe
eliminates Wilson’s only mention of the word “guilt.” Attempting to show that Wilson does feel guilty, Thomas Walsh
likens the dying man’s last words: “dead to the World, to Heaven and to Hope,” to the opening: “Oh, outcasts of
all outcasts most abandoned! — to the earth art thou not forever dead? to its honors, to its golden aspirations? —
and a cloud, dense, dismal, and limitless, does it not hang eternally between thy hopes and heaven?”(11) In his opening words, Wilson appropriates his other half’s dying lines, but, in the context of his
emotional rhetoric, they are uttered as words without meaning. The last line originally read “dead to the world and its
hopes”; Poe capitalizes these images, emphasizing their abstract importance, and adds the reference “to Heaven.” Thus,
he converts the last line into a statement of moral truth that has apparently had little effect on Wilson. The world, hope, and heaven
are still lowercase terms for him, although to his now-dead half they possessed capital importance. The surviving Wilson is tormented by
his deeds; he expresses not a feeling of guilt but a desire for sympathy. He realizes that he has lost the favor of the world and
heaven, but he does not understand the full implications thereof.

Poe has provided specific hints to explain this loss, and his revisions clarify the ironic relationship between
Wilson’s eye for detail and his inability to associate detail with his life’s moral framework, in effect making more
explicit the string of clues leading to the substantiation of Wilson’s moral obtuseness. The sensitive reader should recognize the
well-laid trail of “evidence.” The morally blind Wilson lived not in a Gothic miasma, but in a world composed of
intelligible particulars, and it is interesting to note that Poe’s technique for explicating Wilson’s problem looks forward
to his invention of the detective story and his later ratiocinative tales. Brander Matthews observes: “it is not in the mystery
itself that the author seeks to interest the reader, but rather in the successive steps whereby his analytical observer is enabled to
solve a problem that well might be dismissed as [page 82:] beyond human
elucidation.”(12) These successive steps, beyond the elucidation of William Wilson, serve as
Poe’s challenge to the reader.

NOTES

1. Edgar Allan Poe, “William Wilson,” H.III:300. All quotations from the text
are based on this source.

2. “William Wilson” was also published in The Gift for 1840 and in
TGA; however, besides accidental changes, the story was not extensively revised until the BJ version. I have used and
have checked R. A. Stewart’s collations which appear in H, and, in doing so, I have received much valuable aid and counsel from
Professor Benjamin Franklin Fisher iv.

Ed. Note. Burton’s is considered “original” here because, given the September-October
publication date typical for annuals like The Gift, and the October date for the appearance of Burton’s, one can
hardly distinguish which actually first appeared. The differences are so few as to make the texts identical. Just so for
“final” as regards BJ. Although “William Wilson” reappeared in the Philadelphia Spirit of the
Times in the 5-8 September issue, we have no evidence for Poe’s authorization or revision for this version. Cf.
Christie’s remarks above, p. 44 and n. 4.